1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to magnetoresistive devices, and more particularly, a method for fabricating a magnetoresistive device to improve magnetic and/or magnetoresistive properties of the magnetoresistive device.
2. Background Information
As well known, more desirable magnetic properties of a magnetoresistive device, e.g. coercivity, squareness or abruptness of switching, and magnetoresistance (MR), may be obtained through applying a strain on a magnetoresistive structure in the magnetoresistive device.
One of the existing methods for applying a strain to the magnetoresistive structure requires a stressor layer deposited on the magnetoresistive structure. This will increase the fabrication cost and complexity. In another existing method, the magnetoresistive structure is directly grown on a flexible polymeric substrate, and then a strain can be applied to the magnetoresistive structure by deforming the flexible polymeric substrate. However, this method has a limited application scope because only flexible polymeric substrates can be used in this method, and also because of the physical properties of the flexible polymeric substrates, e.g. a high surface roughness and poor high temperature resistance, i.e. the flexible polymeric substrates cannot suffer high temperature treatments.